Difference between operators and methods

Question

Is there any substantial difference between operators and methods?

The only difference I see is the way the are called, do they have other differences?

For

Answer 1

Is there any substantial difference between operators and methods?

Practically speaking, there is no difference because each operator is mapped to a specific Python special method. Moreover, whenever Python encounters the use of an operator, it calls its associated special method implicitly. For example:

1 + 2

implicitly calls int.__add__, which makes the above expression equivalent¹ to:

(1).__add__(2)

Below is a demonstration:

>>> class Foo:
...     def __add__(self, other):
...         print("Foo.__add__ was called")
...         return other + 10
...
>>> f = Foo()
>>> f + 1
Foo.__add__ was called
11
>>> f.__add__(1)
Foo.__add__ was called
11
>>>

Of course, actually using (1).__add__(2) in place of 1 + 2 would be inefficient (and ugly!) because it involves an unnecessary name lookup with the . operator.

That said, I do not see a problem with generally regarding the operator symbols (+, -, *, etc.) as simply shorthands for their associated method names (__add__, __sub__, __mul__, etc.). After all, they each end up doing the same thing by calling the same method.

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¹Well, roughly equivalent. As documented here, there is a set of special methods prefixed with the letter r that handle reflected operands. For example, the following expression:

A + B

may actually be equivalent to:

B.__radd__(A)

if A does not implement __add__ but B implements __radd__.